Orange’s LTE network now covers all of Paris, as well as 37 other towns in the surrounding area. It has also announced plans to speed up its 4G deployment elsewhere before the end of the year.

The operator’s network will cover 70 “agglomerations”, including over 500 towns in mainland France, by the end of September.

Orange is speeding up its 4G deployment with 40 per cent of the French population to be covered by end 2013, compared to the 30 per cent previously announced.

Orange launched its LTE network commercially in Paris in January 2013.

France’s operators are fighting hard to win over customers with competing coverage claims

Orange claims to be the country’s number one in terms of coverage.  At the end of August, rival SFR said its aim was to hit 70 per cent population coverage by end of 2013 with a mix of LTE and dual carrier HSPA +. The operator said half of this figure will be 4G, which would leave it narrowly behind its larger rival.

Meanwhile Bouygues Telecom plans to launch LTE services on 1 October.

Orange currently has 250,000 LTE subscribers. It also claims to be the only operator in France to offer the maximum theoretical speed of 150 Mb/s.

By end September, it will offer five devices compatible with these speeds: Huawei Ascend P2, Sony Xperia Z1, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Sony Xperia Z Ultra, as well as the Huawei E5776 Domino.

Like Vodafone in the UK, Orange is majoring on the content its packages offer to subscribers. It claims to offer more content than its rivals.